Christian Faith, Science and Miracles
By scientist and priest Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

1. DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF THE TERM "FAITH".

A) First of all, FAITH is a way of obtaining knowledge, not through direct personal experience or reasoning, but through the testimony of others who are considered as possessing some truth that can be shared without distortions due to prejudice or the desire to mislead. Trustworthy witnesses are the basis upon which innocence or culpability is decided in a judicial court; even those who are called as experts to examine material evidence must be trustworthy when they present their testimony.

This faith does not have an automatic relationship with the field of Religion: it is of much more general applicability, as the universal means to acquire culture from different sources, of other human groups and of other ages. Without this human faith the knowledge of history would be impossible, as it would be to find out about distant places, and to acquire the contents of all the specialized sciences where personal effort cannot give an answer (e.g., Atomic Physics, Medicine, foreign languages...practically everything we know).

Human faith is a basis for certainty even against the data of my own sense experience or the spontaneous arguments of "common sense". We are sure that ordinary matter, even of our own body, is a cloud of infinitesimal particles in fast motion within an almost empty space; we also accept that the energy of an impact between particles can be converted into new particles. The consensus of experts who have no reason to deceive is a necessary and sufficient condition for scientific progress in any field, allowing us to build upon the contributions of past generations.

Certainty based on human faith is possible even when our assent is given to something that we do not understand. "Nobody understands Quantum Mechanics" (Richard Feynmann) or the fact that General Relativity is incompatible with it, while both are pillars of Modern Physics with multiple experiments that prove their validity in their own fields. Such is the power of conviction when there are reliable sources for our faith.

Within the area of Theology, the basis for our acceptance of Christianity is the historical fact of Christ's presence and teaching in Palestine 2000 years ago. This fact must be established by the same methodology and with the same criteria that we apply in order to know about Julius Caesar or Christopher Columbus. Christ's teachings must be established by the same steps that we require to find out the teachings of Socrates: the disciples who lived with the Master give us their testimony about his actions and words. The disciples of Christ were witnesses who preferred death to any denial or compromise when transmitting their own experience.

This human, historical, faith is the rational foundation of Christianity; without it, the acceptance of its message would be absurd. We must have objectively valid proofs, otherwise our faith would be only some kind of vague, emotional, private reaction without universal applicability (as the Pope teaches in his Encyclical "Faith and Reason") or simply a mythology of a poetic nature that has no bearing upon real life.

A most important part of the historical testimony about Christ is the insistence of the witnesses upon facts that proved God's sanctioning of the activities, teaching and personality of Christ. Those facts -miracles- were required in order that accepting his claims would not be considered irrational.

Whoever says that he is the Son of God, equal to God, existing before Abraham, of higher dignity than the prophets, entitled to forgive sins, must provide undeniable proofs of those claims. Otherwise, it would be madness to just take him at his word. Faith, in Catholic Theology, is called "rationabile obsequium", a rational response to truth.

Once the divinity of Christ is accepted, his teachings have the highest degree of certainty, giving rise to divine faith which will accept even things that surpass our understanding. If we cannot understand even the behavior of matter in our laboratories, or our own body, we should not be surprised when God's nature and plans seem impossible to fathom.

The Creator of the Universe is not just a "superman" understood as a merely human enlargement of our own persons, but something totally beyond our powers of imagining or extrapolating our experience.

The testimony of the apostles and disciples reaches us after twenty centuries, instructing us about Christ and his teachings. If this is God's plan for our finding the way to Him, it is necessary that the message be unchanged, so that no errors might be introduced by using other languages, or by personal interpretations, the loss of written texts, commentaries or arbitrary additions.

This requires a teaching ministry, with authority due to God's own appointment and assistance, to provide a guarantee of absolute and total fidelity to the original message of Christ. Any group that presents God's word as subject to contradictory interpretations is, by this very fact, admitting that its teaching is of merely human origin and value: God cannot contradict himself.

Christ promised to his Apostles the Spirit of Truth, to keep them from falling into error or into a human "wisdom" that would add or detract from his teaching. That is why he could say "whoever listens to you, listens to Me, whoever despises you, despises Me". Only the Catholic Church claims to have this guarantee of fidelity to Christ's message, not because of any self-assurance of being wiser than others, but because of the promise of the Spirit.

This is why the encyclical letter "The Splendor of Truth" is addressed to the Bishops -successors of the Apostles- and not to the theologians: the Church can entrust theologians with explaining the faith, but they do not have a promise from Christ to keep them from falling into error. If they depart from the teaching tradition of the Church, they have no right to present themselves as catholic theologians, no matter how much they might know about the critical study of texts or the cultures of ancient times.

Since God is infinite Wisdom and Truth we may rest assured that the Christian message will never contradict scientific truths in any field of human knowledge. Apparent conflicts have been the result of taking as science or dogma personal interpretations that go beyond scientific data or the teaching of the Church.

B) The second meaning of FAITH rests upon the first, but instead of pointing to a means of obtaining new knowledge, it focuses upon the effect of that knowledge on our behavior. It can be understood as a trust or confidence that affects our free will (thus implying responsibility, for merit or guilt) and our heart. In our daily way of speaking, I might say "I have a lot of faith in this medical doctor" not because I expect to get new knowledge of Biology or Anatomy, but because my conviction of his expertise and honesty gives me the assurance of being helped in my sickness. This same use of the word "faith" can be applied to the expected benefits of a fitness program, a particular drug, a traditional remedy.

St. Paul uses the word FAITH in this sense when he explicitly writes "Faith is the hope for the eternal goods". This faith-confidence presupposes the first step (faith due to testimony) and it may entail a re-structuring of our personal life to follow the teachings and ideals of a leader, be it in politics, philosophy or religion. This behavior will be rational only if the person to whom such trust is given has proven that it is deserved, both because of an outstanding merit in a particular field and because of the personal honesty and truthfulness of the leader toward those who want to give their allegiance to the admirable ideals that are presented.

This was the case with those who followed Christ, totally confiding in Him and freely and rationally deciding to adjust their lives to his teachings, because they were norms and truths given by God. The divine faith, embracing a Revelation received from Christ, rests upon the infinite trustworthiness of God himself. And those teachings do not remain in an abstract level of classroom learning, either of history or even of theological ideas, but rather become personal life and blood because there are clear credentials showing that such way of life is God's will: credentials that prove Christ's unique dignity with miracles, especially his own Resurrection.

This was the reason for the behavior of the Apostles and of all those who during centuries have followed Christ to the highest levels of sanctity and even martyrdom, living the logical consequences of their faith in the Lord, known and loved and made the only worthwhile norm of life, by a personal and fully responsible decision.

This is "the Faith that can move mountains" because its strength is God's Omnipotence. The Lord never refuses his help to those who have complete confidence in Him, especially when God moves them to ask for a particular favor at some point, with the certainty that it is His will to give what is requested. The swift growth of the early Church, even amidst the persecutions from Jews and pagans, cannot be explained without accepting the impact of miraculous events that the "Acts of the Apostles" describes after Pentecost.

We should not forget that the followers of Christ, entrusted with the mission to go to the whole world to proclaim his message, were a few men without any academic credentials or social standing, weak fishermen or country folk for the most part.

But we should also keep in mind that through the history of the Church many saints, who greatly influenced its development - St. Dominic, St. Francis Assisi, St. Ignatius, St. Therese of Avila- never performed a miracle in their lifetimes. This does not imply a lack of faith: the gifts of the Spirit are meant for the good of the Church, not for the personal glory of any member. It is possible -theologically- that a miracle might occur even through an unworthy minister, because its purpose is not to prove the holiness of the instrument, but the mercy and power of God.

C) The third meaning of FAITH concerns, not a human response, but a gift from God, a Theological Virtue, unattainable through human effort and without any visible effects either on the mind or the will of the recipient. It is given in Baptism, even to a baby who is unaware of the sacrament and does not acquire new knowledge or have any confidence as a result of this gift. It belongs to the supernatural realm: it is, in a certain sense, a graft of divinity that raises to the level of eternity every act of the person incorporated to Christ to become a member of his Mystical Body, a child of God.

Through this Faith one becomes a member of the Church in a permanent way, stamped forever with a seal that indicates God's choice, in such a way that even the most hardened sinner still receives graces moving the will to repentance and leading to reconciliation with God's people. Only the sinner who apostatizes renouncing the faith loses this vital connection in a kind of spiritual suicide, but -even then- Baptism cannot be performed again if the sinner repents.

Because this theological virtue of Faith requires knowledge and free acceptance in order to be fruitful, the Church does not allow Baptism for a person who lacks instruction in the contents of Christian teaching, unless there is a sufficient reason to expect that the instruction will be obtained: this is applicable to children whose parents and godparents explicitly guarantee their Christian upbringing after Baptism. We are not dealing with some kind of magical rite, but with a joint effort in which human activity is the means through which God bestows his graces, even if all our efforts are infinitely inadequate for the purpose of reaching Him.

This is the Faith that is defined as a gratuitous gift from God, independently of any human effort or merit, but a gift that God never refuses to those who have done what they could to find Him. In the normal way of acting of divine Providence -with respect for our freedom and the activity of the created world- this Faith will be obtained after the two previous stages, with a sufficient knowledge of the life and teachings of Christ and the confidence that He is the only Way that God wants us to follow to find Him.

Being a "Virtue"-which means a force, a power, an active principle- it is not something in the realm of either sense or rational knowledge, but rather a new power to act at a divine level. But activity follows nature: this is why we are taught in Theology that by Baptism we become sharers in the divine nature.

Neither angels nor any created being can partake of God's nature except through the generous gift of the infinite source of Goodness and Life. This is saving Faith, that introduces us into the way that God lives, and that cannot exercise its power except in union with Hope and Charity, the Love of total self-giving which is the very life of God and our eternal happiness.

Since this is the eternal destiny of all human beings of any place and time, we can be sure that God will give enough light and grace to everybody in order to have a truly responsible act of accepting God's will, even if personal or cultural constraints seem to make that knowledge and response practically impossible.

We do not know how God works upon the human soul, perhaps at the moment of death, but we can say that His infinite justice and love truly imply a real desire for the salvation of everybody, a salvation that includes the incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ.

2. SCIENCE AND MIRACLES

Science, in the modern technical use of the word (as different from the Humanities) is the study of the behavior of matter -its interactions- through experimentation and measurement. This study discovers ways of acting that are more or less common and that occur with such regularity and constancy that they must be due to what matter IS, at diverse levels of its structure. Statements expressing in a generalized form those ways of acting are called "Laws of Nature", which are not some norms imposed from outside, but the necessary consequence o the very nature of material things.

Because our measurements can never be totally exact and our ability to observe nature is limited, laws are always stated in a restricted form, indicating margins of error and the levels of structure where the law has been verified. As an example, the Law of Universal Gravitation cannot be verified within an atom, and whatever might occur within a Black Hole will always remain undetected. But with those limitations - due not only to our technology, but to nature itself and to scientific methodology- we can assert that those laws are always obeyed in each particular instance.

Only when the knowledge of all necessary parameters is impossible it becomes acceptable to speak of chaos or chance, even if neither term describes a physical force or gives a reason for the observed behavior. They rather refer to instances where the detailed prediction is impossible, either because we cannot obtain data at the atomic level or because in very complex systems the mutual dependence of multiple components renders their evolution unpredictable in the long run.

The logical consequences of studying a Universe that appears finite, both in spatial dimensions and in its past temporal evolution, oblige science to admit a beginning from nothing of a material order. There was no "previous stage" that would determine initial parameters or laws: only the word "creation" correctly indicates the infinite step from nothing to something, and creation requires the total determination of the created being by its Creator.

Creation is a free act, not imposed by any type of self-development of a Creator who cannot be immersed in time and change, who is not a part of the material world. And created beings, not having in themselves the reason for existence, need to be kept from returning to nothingness by the conservation which implies a constant dependence upon the source of their being.

While created matter acts according to its properties, and the Creator will not change things arbitrarily, it is always possible to have an extraordinary event for a sufficient reason. To affirm that matter must always act in a certain and fixed way, even independently of its Creator, implies a philosophical absurdity. If our own free activity can change the way things occur (for instance, when we apply a flame to an object that could exist indefinitely without burning), it defies all logic to say that the Creator cannot have the right to act upon things that he created and that he maintains in existence.

Science is not rendered impossible because we admit the possibility of our own free activity; we can say the same, with a better reason, about the activity of the Creator, which cannot be limited by our norms.

It is also quite wrong to say -as a scientific statement- that in the world of material activity anything can happen if we compute the probability of an outcome during a sufficiently long time or in a large number of cases. This implies the denial of any true relationship between cause and effect, thus destroying the foundations of physical science, which always seeks a reason for the order and constancy of behavior that is observed.

Chaos and chance are never a reason for regularity, and their application to complex systems still has to save the conservation laws that make science possible: conservation of mass-energy, of linear and angular momentum, of net electrical charge. To say otherwise renders science meaningless, ending frequently with an arbitrary appeal to a "need" to have multiple universes where every possible outcome of mathematical computations has to occur …but cannot be verified!

Summing up: Science is possible because there is a fixed pattern of material activity, based upon the very nature of material things. But their existence and activity depends at every moment upon the Creator, who freely gave existence to matter and endowed it with those properties that determine its development.

For a sufficient reason of a higher order, the Creator can act in extraordinary ways to change the normal pattern of material behavior, thus giving an indication of his powerful presence. This is what we accept as the possibility of a miracle. To deny a priori such possibility is arbitrary and without logical foundation.

3 - THE THEOLOGICAL MEANING OF MIRACLES

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its no. 156, underlines the tight relationship between proofs of the fact of Revelation, its doctrinal contents and the historical presence of Christ on our world, and the consequent acceptance of Revelation and its teachings when we embrace the faith. If God has made us in his image, due to our rationality and free will, he cannot ask that we abdicate reason when we encounter his historical manifestations, meant precisely to help us at those levels where reason alone is insufficient.

"In order that our acceptance of the faith might occur in harmony with reason, God wanted that external proofs of his Revelation be joined to the internal help of the Holy Spirit. Thus the MIRACLES of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the growth of the Church and its holiness, life and stability, are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, suited to our intelligence; they are reasons to believe that show that assent to the faith is not, in any way, a blind impulse of the mind" (Dei Filius DS 3008-9; cf. Mc 16, 20, Heb 2, 4).

Faith has to be a free act of the will, never imposed from outside by any kind of authority: "nobody may be forced to embrace the faith against his will" (Catechism no. 160) But this is misinterpreted if it is taken to mean that faith cannot be supported by sufficient evidence: it is clear that the text quoted refers to external human pressures, social or political.

In the internal forum, prejudice can lead to the rejection of proofs that are quite convincing and that show that a manifestation of God has taken place. Nor is this kind of "freedom" restricted to religious belief: in Nazi Germany the Theory of Relativity was considered wrong and unacceptable because of a racial prejudice (it was "Jewish science") and in Soviet Russia geneticists were forced to deny the stability of heredity because this tenet was incompatible with the communist dogma that social and political beliefs should be inherited.

That faith is perfectly compatible with rational proofs is obvious from the very first statement of the Creed: "I believe in God…Creator of Heaven and Earth", a truth that the first Vatican Council defined could be obtained with certainty by the use of human reason. This logical certainty does not render faith impossible or empty. And the faith of St. Thomas, touching the wounds of the risen Christ, is true faith, even if he is rebuked for not accepting the sufficient testimony of other witnesses. In fact, rational proofs are required for our faith, and this is the purpose of the miracles that Christ presented as his credentials as God's envoy, the Messiah, the Son of God.

WHAT CONSTITUTES A MIRACLE?

The concept of an apologetic miracle, as accepted in Theology, refers to a fact that is objectively observable and that indicates God's direct activity upon nature. It is possible, at least as a hypothesis, to find phenomena that are externally verifiable with total independence of any prejudice or cultural conditioning and that cannot be explained within the framework of the laws that direct the behavior of matter.

Not only because of our imperfect knowledge of nature, but because in the effect produced or in the way to attain it (for instance, by ordering it to happen) all the well established norms of material activity -according to its forces and properties- are transcended. In such a case -which will happen only within a religious context- we must accept God's activity as the only sufficient reason for the result: a miracle.

Since we require that the fact be objectively observable by anybody, we deal with external phenomena, not something merely subjective or transitory nor depending upon the faith of the observer. To have a mystical experience, a vision of Mary, does not constitute an apologetic miracle, since nobody else can verify that it is happening (but there might be other accompanying phenomena that might be observable and that defy natural explanation).

Possible effects of the human psyche upon the body are also difficult to distinguish from miracles unless there is a sudden and permanent organic change, mostly when dealing with persons who are highly excitable or prone to suggestions.

In this strict use of the term miracle we cannot apply it, for example, to the Eucharist. There is nothing observable to indicate a change in the bread and wine before and after the words pronounced by the priest during the Mass: its truth is accepted by faith, not by physical evidence.

On the other hand, there are serious reports of several instances when, during the Mass, the bread was visibly and permanently changed into flesh, observable even under the microscope, or the presence of blood was obvious to any observer. In those cases the visible changes would constitute a miracle.

As a different example, the "miracle of the Sun" reported from Fatima cannot be established as an objective change in the Sun itself: instruments observing it detected nothing special, and even among the crowd at Fatima not everybody could see the strange gyrations and light patterns reported by others. One could say that the fact that so many people saw the display cannot be explained by any natural cause, but it could not be proven as a miracle.

The appearance of wounds corresponding to those inflicted during the crucifixion of Christ (the Stigmata) can be due to psychosomatic effects known in medical practice; the positioning of such wounds does not prove their placement in the body of the crucified Christ, but rather reflects the images -crucifixes- normally observed by the person exhibiting the stigmata. Miracles occur to show divine activity for the good of the Church, not to supply information that we should obtain by our effort.

As a perfect example of an apologetic miracle in relatively modern times, we can mention the "Miracle of Calanda" (1640), involving the sudden recovery of a leg amputated below the knee two years and five months earlier. Hundreds of witnesses, including the well known surgeons who performed the amputation, testified to the undeniable fact that the young man -Juan Pellicer- had suffered the accident that led to the loss of his leg, was seen for over two years begging with his crutches, and then recovered the leg while asleep at home.

All of Europe marveled at the report, and even the King of Spain verified the fact when Juan went to Madrid at his request (an interview with the English ambassador present as well).

But prejudice cannot deal with facts: the philosopher Jung acknowledges that the miracle has the best historical credentials that one could require, but because from its acceptance one would logically have to recognize the activity of God, it must be denied!

Miracles, in principle, could involve divine activity -recognizable as such- upon inanimate matter: the sea, the atmosphere, artificial or natural objects. Or upon human beings, in their external behavior, their bodies (healings) or their activities (even of the intellectual order: prophecy, knowledge of occult facts, of other languages) But in every case it is required that checks "before and after" establish the real facts, and then that the result or the way to obtain it be totally beyond the scope of material or human activity.

THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST

The claims reported in the Gospels as made by Christ during his three years of public life are totally unique, not only in the entire Bible, but in the history of all religions as well. In a brief summary we can mention that he asserted repeatedly that:

• He is "the One who is to come", the Messiah (Mt 11, 2-6; Jn 4, 26; 10, 24-25; Lc 7, 20-23)
• He has greater dignity and authority than prophets and patriarchs, Jacob, Abraham, Moses.
• He is "The Light of the world", imparting eternal life (Jn 8, 12; 6, 51-58)
• He is the only Way to God, requiring a clear response pro or con (Lc 11, 23)
• He has the divine right to forgive sins (Lc 5, 24) and to work on the Sabbath (Jn 5, 19-30)
• His claims are superior to any family ties (Mt 10, 37)
• Only he knows God in an intimate way (Jn 17, 3-5)
• God alone knows him in his true personality (Lc 10, 22)
• He is the Son of God in a true and unique way (Jn 3, 16-18; 5, 18; 11, 30)

Those claims would be ridiculous if he didn't offer any proof of what he said, and to accept them at his word would have been irrational. But he appeals to his miracles as a guarantee of his mission:

• "Go and tell John what you have seen…" (Mt 11, 2-6)
• "You still do not understand?" is his rebuke to the disciples who fail to see the true meaning of the multiplication of the loaves (Mt 16, 8-11; Mc 8, 17-21)
• "That you might realize that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins… get up and walk! " (Mt 9, 4-6; Lc 5, 20-24)
• "If I had not done things that nobody ever did, you would have no sin" "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin…but you see and don't believe: your sin remains" (Jn 9, 41; 15, 24)

To deny the obvious meaning of all the texts in the Gospels concerning miracles, in the name of an arbitrary "demythologizing" that starts with the prejudice of some Protestant exegetes that nothing of a supernatural order can be accepted, is totally opposed to the relationship between faith and reason, besides lacking any scientific basis, because there is nothing to support it in the Gospels or in other believable sources.

The purpose of the Gospels, explicitly stated, is to provide reasons to embrace the faith, through the evidence of well attested historical facts (Lc 1, 1-4). Only a starting point that reduces faith to a mere question of subjective feelings (many times rejected by the Church) can lead to affirm that we have to believe without proofs; on the contrary, we need proofs.

This is not the same as saying that we believe only if we totally understand what we believe: the proof does not deal with the understanding of the contents of the faith, but with the authority that makes it believable.

The public activity of Christ, abundantly presented in detail in the Gospels, is centered on signs that are visible facts that have a meaning sought by Christ and quite clear for those who see things without prejudice. Such signs point to the power of God which guarantees the mission, the teachings, the holiness and the Person of Christ: "The works that I perform, those testify in my favor" (Jn 5, 36). They are miracles (miraculum, some admirable and marvellous event) that can be objectively seen -they are nor something subjective- and that have real effects, that are permanent at the normal level of permanence (a miraculous raising of the dead does not bestow immortality) and that cannot be attributed to the ways matter acts according to its laws.

This last condition is the reason why they cannot be reproduced at will in an experiment: they only happen by the free decision of God and in a setting that shows his activity for some supernatural purpose.

Christ's miracles cover many different levels of activity. He knows the future, predicting Peter's denial, the cowardice of the Apostles who will leave him alone, the Passion in full detail, his own rising from the dead (a prophecy that was clearly understood as such by his enemies). He was also aware of hidden thoughts and of private experiences (Nathanael).

He showed his total control over inanimate matter: changing water into wine, feeding thousands with a few loaves, suddenly stopping a violent storm, walking on water. In each case the effects are due only to an effortless command and the Gospel remarks on the amazed reaction of the witnesses, and the comments of those who were experts on the subject.

He had an absolute power over health and life itself, shown in the sudden healing of multiple sicknesses, even at a distance (thus without any possibility of "suggestion" of the patient) and with added details that include the granting of sight to a man born blind, together with the ability to interpret visual stimuli (something that does not occur in the few cases when medical efforts give sight to the blind from birth).

Faced with the miracle, the only answer of the prejudiced Pharisees is to disqualify and mock the one healed by Christ, but without being able to deny the fact or avoid his logical argument about the holiness and mission of Christ.

In several instances he showed his control of life and death, returning to life even Lazarus, already decaying in the tomb. But his own resurrection is the key miracle, repeatedly forecast and later presented by the Apostles as the main argument for their faith. It was asserted as a historical fact in the full sense of the word, not because it happened before a notary public, but because it is the necessary and certain inference of the experience of witnesses deserving full trust: they saw Christ, dead and buried, and three days later they saw him alive, they touched him and they ate with him.

This is the same as the historical reasoning for accepting that somebody was born even if there are no witnesses of the birth, or to say that somebody died even if the death itself had no witnesses. If nobody doubts death when seeing the corpse, there is no reason to doubt the resurrection when the same person is later seen alive, even if we don't understand how it happened.

The evidence for the Resurrection of Christ was indirectly reinforced by the desire of his adversaries to prevent any fraud. The guards at the tomb made it impossible for anybody to go in or to take anything out. And confronted with the preaching of the resurrection by the Apostles, nobody could show them to be liars by producing the corpse of Christ or some believable witnesses of its theft.

This is why the Encyclical Letter "The Splendor of Truth" insists upon basing our faith on the historical character of the Resurrection. In the words of St Paul, "if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is empty and we are the most miserable human beings" (1 Cor 15, 16-19). The Apostles define their role as being "witnesses to the Resurrection" and before the Sanhedrin they claim to be obeying God's injunction when they preach it (Act 1, 22). Because of their preaching they are punished and finally put to death.

Only with the Resurrection of Christ can the Cross be seen as a triumph, overcoming its shame and the crumbling of the faith of the disciples. They had to be "beaten on the head" by the evidence of their senses, even touching Christ and eating with him: especially for a Jew, it made no sense to think of a metaphorical return to life or of a "resurrection" with a non-material body, which is also scientifically absurd, since a body is only a material structure.

Because of the Resurrection and of the previous miracles performed by Christ, our faith has a rational basis. No further miracles are needed: there is enough evidence for those who do not close their eyes to it. But we also gratefully accept God's continuing action in the Church to keep alive our awareness of the supernatural realities, which show God's love -even through marvellous means- towards those who believe and trust in Him completely.

NOTE:

The concept of FAITH, within typical Protestant theology, has very different connotations from those presented in the first part of this paper. In a very concise description, Protestant doctrine holds:

• 1- That the human mind, due to original sin, is now incapable of attaining Truth., at least in religious matters.
• 2- That Faith is an assent given without reasons to justify it, or simply, an act of the will without a rational basis.
• 3- That the only source of Faith is the Bible, a book that must contain in itself its own proof of being revealed by God.
• 4- That this book allows different private interpretations, all of them equally acceptable, even when they are contradictory.

The first statement is tantamount to a denial of human rationality, thus demoting us to the level of mere animals. It is clearly unacceptable, not only because of its logical consequences in the field of religion, but even in scientific endeavors if taken globally.

The second premise denies that Faith is a rational act: one believes "just because". Whoever accepts something as true without reasons, is acting irrationally.

The third assertion requires the acceptance of the unique character of the Bible, as God's Word, either because the book itself says so or because there is a tradition holding it to be so within a given cultural milieu. But all that is also applicable to the Qu'ran, and there is no objective rule to distinguish canonical books from apocryphal texts.

Finally, the rejection of the Principle of Non-contradiction destroys every logical foundation in any area of human knowledge.

Only the Catholic Church, relying, not on printed pages, but on the living teaching of the Apostles and their successors, upholds human reason in its full value. Only the Church, assisted by the Spirit, could select the true presentations of Christ's message, rejecting fables and human additions. And only the Spirit guarantees that Christ's doctrine is correctly understood and transmitted through the centuries.

APPENDIX I:

The historical evidence for Jesus (Yeshua) of Nazareth and his death by crucifixion

Non-Christian Sources for Jesus

• Tacitus (AD 55-120), a renowned historical of ancient Rome, wrote in the latter half of the first century that "Chrestus ... was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also.' (Annals 15: 44).
• Suetonius writing around AD 120 tells of disturbances of the Jews at the `instigation of Chrestus', during the time of the emperor Claudius. This could refer to Jesus, and appears to relate to the events of Acts 18:2, which took place in AD 49.
• Thallus, a secular historian writing perhaps around AD 52 refers to the death of Jesus in a discussion of the darkness over the land after his death. The original is lost, but Thallus' arguments - explaining what happened as a solar eclipse - are referred to by Julius Africanus in the early 3rd century.
• Mara Bar-Serapion, a Syrian writing after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, mentions the earlier execution of Jesus, whom he calls a `King'.
• The Babylonian Talmud refers to the crucifixion (calling it a hanging) of Jesus the Nazarene on the eve of the Passover. In the Talmud Jesus is also called the illegitimate son of Mary.
• The Jewish historian Josephus describes Jesus' crucifixion under Pilate in his Antiquities, written about AD 93-94. Josephus also refers to James the brother of Jesus and his execution during the time of Ananus (or Annas) the high priest.

• Paul's epistles were written in the interval 20-30 years after Jesus' death. They are valuable historical documents, not least because they contain credal confessions which undoubtedly date to the first few decades of the Christian community. Paul became a believer in Jesus within a few years of Jesus' crucifixion. He writes in his first letter to the Corinthians: "For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas (Peter), then by the twelve."

This makes quite clear that belief in the death of Jesus was there from the beginning of Christianity.

The four gospels

• The four gospels were written down in the period 20-60 years after Jesus' death, within living memory of the events they describe. The events which the gospels describe for the most part took place in the full light of public scrutiny. Jesus' teaching was followed by large crowds. There were very many witnesses to the events of his life. His death was a public execution.

Manuscript evidence for the Bible and its transmission

The manuscript evidence for the Greek scriptures is overwhelming, far greater than for all other ancient texts. Over 20,000 manuscripts attest to them. Whilst there are copying errors, as might be expected from the hand of copyists, these are almost all comparatively minor and the basic integrity of the copying process is richly supported.

Furthermore, when Western Christians studied the Hebrew scriptures during the Renaissance, they found them to agree remarkably closely with their Greek and Latin translations which had been copied again and again over a thousand years. There were copying errors, and some other minor changes, but no significant fabrications of the stupendous scale which would be required to concoct the story of Jesus' death.

Likewise when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered they included Hebrew Biblical scrolls dating from before the time of Jesus. These too agreed very closely with the oldest Hebrew Masoretic manuscripts of more than a thousand years later. Again, no fabrications, but evidence of remarkably faithful copying.

Conclusion: Jesus of Nazareth is a figure of history

Clearly there are events recorded in connection with Jesus' life that many non-Christians will not accept, such as the miracles, the virgin birth, and the resurrection. However what is beyond dispute is that Yeshua (`Jesus') of Nazareth was a figure of history, who lived, attracted a following in his life time amongst his fellow Jews and was executed by crucifixion by the Roman authorities, after which his followers spread rapidly. Both secular and Christian sources of the period agree on this.

The primary sources for the history of Jesus' public life are the gospels. These were written down relatively soon after his death - within living memory - and we have every indication that these sources were accepted as reliable in the early Christian community, during a period when first and second hand witnesses to Jesus' life were still available.

We conclude that any statements about Isa (Jesus) in the Qur'an, made six centuries after Jesus' death, without a shred of proof or evidence, must be judged against the historical evidence from these first century sources, and not vice versa. Because of the frequent appeal to the Qur'an against the facts presented above, it may be useful to check more in detail the following web pages:

http://www.debate,org.uk/topics/theo/islam_christ.html

http//ww.debate.org.uk/topics/theo/qur-jes.htm

http://www.answering-islam.org/Intro/replacing.html

Further reading: The Jesus I never knew, by Philip Yancey. To contact the author: markd@shack.org.au

APPENDIX II: THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF GOSPEL NARRATIVES

We have insisted upon the historical value of testimonies given, orally and in writing, by those who lived with Christ and heard his teachings: only thus can our faith be rationally acceptable. But it is this historical character that is denied even by Christians outside the Church, particularly by the Protestant critics and exegetes of the last 150 years (Strauss in 1835, Renan in 1863, Bultman in our time). Their denial, especially concerning Christ's miracles, stems from two sources:

- First, it is said that the Gospels are a late compilation (put together in the second part of the 2nd century) of oral traditions beginning with the preaching of the disciples, later embellished and reworked by Christian communities during the first hundred years after the death of Christ. We do not have testimonies of those who really lived with him.

- Second, the Gospels are classified as belonging to the type of symbolic literature where mythical meanings override real data, following patterns common to poetic and marvelous stories typical of the ancient Near East. The only real information that can be obtained from the Gospels is the fact that the Christian community of that time shared the conviction that Christ was God's envoy to fulfill his promises to Israel and bring salvation to the world.

Both arguments are alike in presenting preconceived positions with very little scientific support. Against the claim that the Gospels were written rather late, we can now counter that the fragment 7Q5 of a papyrus from Qumram, dated with certainty around the year 50 A.D., has been shown (in 1972) by Fr. José O'Callaghan S.J. to contain a few words of the Gospel of St. Mark, c. 6 verses 52-53. Nobody has objected with any scientific argument against the identification or the date, even if many refuse to accept what is incompatible with their tenets.

In 1996 Carsten P. Thiede, a German Protestant scholar, identified fragments of the Gospel of Matthew ( 7 verses of chapter 26) in a papyrus kept at Magdalen College (Oxford) and found at Luxor, in Egypt. Other fragments, probably from the same source, are kept in Barcelona (Fundación San Juan Evangelista). Both texts can be dated, by the type of writing, calligraphy and abbreviations, to the period around the year 60 A.D. Details of this work can be found in Thiede's book Eyewitness to Christ (Doubleday, N.Y.) Once more, negative reactions were published very soon. But we can say that there is an archaeological proof of the fact that both Gospels were known in Christian communities of outlaying areas of the Roman Empire when eyewitnesses of the activities described in the Gospels were alive.

Regarding the type of literature, recent studies show a perfect correspondence between Greco-Roman biographies of that period and the Gospels. In 1978 Talbert classified them within the biographical genre; Schuler in 1982 asserted the biographical nature of Matthew's Gospel. In 1984 Cancik (ed.) did the same with the Gospel of Mark. In the book "Ascent and Decline of the Roman World" Klaus Berger (also in 1984) shows how the Gospels are very close to the "lives" of ancient philosophers. In 1992, Burridge stated that the present trend to consider the Gospels as true and proper "lives of Jesus" is reasonable, when comparing them to 10 Greco-Roman "lives" written between the 5th century B.C. and the 3rd A.D. (See the details in the book -in Spanish- Jesucristo, Salvador del Mundo, BAC 1996)

Other books worth reading are, by Vittorio Messori, Hypothesis about Jesus, He suffered under Pontius Pilate and They say that He rose from the Dead . They critically discuss the historical nature of the Gospels. The same author wrote also The Miracle of Calanda.